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Macklin Celebrini & Top Defensemen Headline the 2024 NHL Combine

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers | By Mark Scheig | Last updated Jun 3, 2024 9:19 AM ET

The 2024 NHL Draft Combine gets underway this week at Buffalo’s Harborcenter. This year, 100 prospects will attend the annual event to interview with teams, go over medicals and complete fitness testing.

Headlining this year’s edition of the Combine is projected number-one pick Macklin Celebrini. But behind him, the top defensemen in this draft as well as other top forward prospects will make their case to teams that they should be the ones drafted in a certain spot.

While there isn’t much mystery as to which team Celebrini is expected to go to, he still has things he’d like to show at the Combine. That’s where we’ll begin our top headlines of the week in Buffalo.

The Celebrini Show

As soon as the San Jose Sharks won the NHL Draft Lottery, it became a foregone conclusion that they’d use the first pick to draft Celebrini. GM Mike Grier confirmed as much when interviewed after the lottery draw. It’s a neat hometown story as Celebrini’s father Rick works for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors. He is now expected to stay in the Bay Area.

Celebrini will still go through the interview process as well as the process for medicals and fitness testing. Other slam-dunk top-overall picks such as Connor Bedard last season and Connor McDavid in 2015 all went through the motions.

Think of it as a rite of passage for the prospects even though Celebrini doesn’t have anything to prove from a draft-slot perspective. He will give the Sharks a first-hand look at where he is at with his fitness and medicals. Other teams will request an interview with him as well as part of their due diligence process.

One of the possible stories coming into the Combine was if Celebrini would return to school next season. But will Will Smith recently signing his ELC, this suggests the Hobey Baker winner would sign his ELC this summer and be a top contender for the Calder Trophy in 2024-25.

Top Defensemen Take Center Stage

The 2024 NHL Draft will be remembered beyond Celebrini for the number of top defensemen available. Among those who should hear their names called early are Michigan State’s Artyom Levshunov, Denver’s Zeev Buium, Saginaw’s Zayne Parekh, London’s Sam Dickinson and Calgary’s Carter Yakemchuk. There are others but we’ll get to them a little later in this piece.

This Combine will potentially put some separation between these top defensemen. Not only are there a handful to pick from, they each bring a little something different to the table. Not only will it be interesting to see who goes where, but it will be interesting to see if a team values a certain aspect of one defenseman over another. It’s very possible a team outside the top-10 could land one of these players.

Behold. Here is the list of #2024NHLDraft prospects that have been invited to the Combine in Buffalo this week. pic.twitter.com/UsrEOIbwtN
— Mark Scheig (@mark_scheig) June 2, 2024

What we will try to get from the Combine is what teams wanted to know about these players. Imagine you are a team like the Chicago Blackhawks. At two, they have a choice to make. Do they take a highly talented forward such as Ivan Demidov or do they take a potential cornerstone defenseman in Levshunov? Then the domino effect afterwards will shape how the first round unfolds.

Other Top Headlines

Here is a list of some of the other stories we will be watching this week in Buffalo. We will be on site Friday afternoon when select top prospects will speak to the media. Then we’ll be with you early Saturday morning as we watch the Fitness testing and speak to the prospects afterwards. Only when a prospect’s medicals are cleared will they be allowed to partake in the fitness testing. Should someone scheduled drop out, we will pass along.

This article first appeared on The Hockey Writers and was syndicated with permission.

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